Schools, Science and Education

A lot of people on Twitter have recently been talking about the importance of mini-quizzes and how they are carried out. I’ve been working on a little program to help me out with this and you’re more than welcome to use it.

What it is

A simple Excel program that uses a list of questions and answers to generate a random 10 question quiz. You can set it to ask 5 questions from any point in the course and 5 questions from the current topic (this is what I do).

How I use it

For each topic I write flashcards on Quizlet in question and answer form. The cards are lean and focussed to only have the material necessary and nothing extraneous (occasionally I include practice questions for improving procedural technique). I print off a PDF with all the questions and answers and give it to students at the beginning of a unit. I tell them that all my verbal questions will be based on them and they are expected to begin learning them off by heart and referring to them in their verbal and written answers.

Every three lessons, the class receives a mini quiz generated by the Roulette. I display the questions on the board, give them ten minutes to answer in the back of their books and then peer assess. Students collate their score /5 for the first five questions a score /5 for the second five. Each student receives a small piece of paper which they fold in half. On the outside they write their name, and on the inside they write the two numbers /5. I take these in and record them.

Sometimes (trying to do this more) I will ask students to raise their hands if they got Q1 right, then Q2 etc. I’ll pick a Q that many of them got wrong and then do some boardwork trying to clear up any misunderstanding.

Strengths:

Retrieval practice

Interleaved/spaced practice

Easy to use

No macros (so doesn’t crash for no reason)

Can gather quite a bit of data on the students re their performance

High success rate is possible: all the questions and answers are available to them

In time I will make it available to parents who can support their children revise effectively

Investment: can be used for many years to come (hopefully)

Weaknesses:

No diagram questions

No multiple choice questions

Relies (to an extent) on effective peer-assessment

The link below has the Roulette set up for where I am up to with my current year 10’s. I will periodically update it here with new questions if people let me know that they are interested.

Feel free to use it or not – let me know if you have any thoughts! I’d especially like to hear from people who are looking at something like this for a non-science subject.

UPDATE 18/5/18

Have updated the RR with a no-repeats version that a couple of different people sent to me via twitter. I am no longer 100% sure how it works but hey. We also now use a tracker sheet which goes in the front of students’ books and is transferred when they get a new one. It goes by number of questions wrong as teachers will be doing quizzes with differing numbers of questions.

Mr Allsop History has a great version of the generator here which turns it into games like battleships.

UPDATE 26/10/17

You will note that this should be difficult for procedures/calculation questions. I have written a flashcard set for quantitative chemistry where I have done the questions with algebraic letters (x, y etc.) which means that when I use them in class I just make up the numbers and the students need to solve.

UPDATE 26/05/17

Following discussions with people on Twitter and my own experimentation in class I’ve added tabs with an option for an 8 and 6 question quiz. I’ve found that a 10 question one can take 25/30 minutes which can eat away at your lesson time. It’s a very difficult balance in terms of how to spend your lesson time but this at least will give you the option.

*I don’t think Excel can give random values that don’t repeat without a macro, which I don’t want to use for ease.

NB Matthew Benyohai pointed out a couple of errors in the questions which is super embarrassing. Oh well – will sort out tomorrow. NB have now edited the questions and re-uploaded with a load more of them

OMG!!!! You have literally just changed my life! This is the best thing I’ve downloaded in years! We’ve been creating quiz questions to start every lesson this year but it’s a manual activity of choosing questions. This is such a game changer. Thank you SO much for sharing, your impact will be felt here in Surrey!

Errr….ignore me….I think I pressed the wrong button and somehow got a chart tab added in. Just downloaded again, it was not from yours!

If you’re interested, I’ve adapted slightly. I’ve reduced interleaved/ random questions down to 3 each and added in a “teacher choice” question where the teacher can add in 3x question numbers of their choosing if these were identified in a prior lesson as needing a review. Can of course send back to you anything I do but used =IF(E8=””,””,VLOOKUP(E8,Questions!A:E,2,FALSE))

This is fantastic! I teach MFL and need a list of randomised Qs for students to answer in the target language. However it’d easily work for just single words of vocab too. Can’t wait to share with my colleagues. Thank you so much for the work you’ve put into this.

This is amazing! You have just saved me hours of work! Thank you so much. I work in a Welsh medium school, so plan on translating this – once I’ve translated, I could send you a link for other WJEC users if it would be useful? Thanks again!

You maintain your question list in the spreadsheet and it will squirt your desired number of questions on the topic(s) of your choice into a Google Slides presentation. (Can then be downloaded and stuck in a Powerpoint or printed, depending what floats your boat.)

This looks fantastic. I have been using mini quizzes as a starter for a long time but I can see that once questions are set up in the programme this will be a fantastic time saver. The interleaving part is great as well. I work in Scotland so I plan to adapt some of your A-Level organic questions for the Higher Chemistry course. Wish I had time to adapt your roulettes for all my year groups. Think however I will start small and adapt some of your KS3 topics for my S2 classes. They do love a retrieval quiz and my explanations for why they are so important!

Hi Adam do you have a blank template or have I missed it? Sorry if I have. I’m in Ireland and looking to do ones for LC Physics, Chemistry and the new junior cycle. Happy to share as I get them done. Thanks Cathal

Why, thank you! I teach adult learners, and I introduced it in class tonight. Most of the class wanted a copy, to do retrieval practice themselves. It’s a mix of vocab items and sentences to translate. It’s very much a work in progress, but I’ll share a copy once I’ve got more in it. I was delighted to realize how easy it is to use. I’m promoting it where I work, in a Māori education setting, so it could take off with other Māori language teachers. Enjoy your summer!

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